A heading on the on the web, on the 13th of June, stated that Alistair Darling in a report to the financial Times, was warning that the fluctuating price of oil could seriously affect the financial recovery of the Western nations, as a result of the Arab states finding their economy to have been suffering in recent months due to the price of oil having fallen. The corollary of the statement is frightening, it implies that the whole of the world that has not access to its own oil, is having its finances controlled by the Arab states, Russia and any other oil-producing nation, with all the parameters that that implies. Just prior to when the credit crunch was fierce, oil was at a price roughly double what it is today, and the oil producers realising that we were between a rock and a hard place, immediately reduced the price.
We, through our ridiculous transport policy are having to import more oil than we should need, because of the ascendancy of the motor car and the degeneration of public transport. Oil itself is not exactly endangered as a commodity, because the Pole areas have not been thoroughly investigated, but it’s obvious that it is a diminishing resource irrespective of that fact. If we are to become less dependent on the price of oil for our budgeting, and therefore on the whims of the oil producers, we must rationalise our public transport system to what it was before Beecham tinkered with it. With the building up of our cities and large towns, we are inhibited to some extent, from the possibility of improving the rail system, which is the most important, simple and economic means of transportation. In Belfast the problem was reversed, the north part of the city was totally revamped to accommodate a motorway, so change is not necessarily impossible.
It is crazy that we are constantly increasing the size of motorways at the expense of farmland in what is really a very small, overpopulated country. Making local transport more amenable to the population, and subsidised if necessary, so that the burden of using it falls equally on the whole population through the taxation system, then we will have corrected this latest discovery of particles in the exhaust of vehicles which is damaging our children in particular, while reducing the traffic on the roads, which in turn will be a safety measure, and lessen the stress to the individual of driving and finding parking. We will also not have to worry about our motor industry, as it is already dwindling rapidly. I have always believed that the necessity to maintain the automotive industry was a linchpin of the economy and has been one of the stumbling blocks to improving our transport infrastructure. We will also probably help reduce quite considerably, the requirement of importing so much oil
This is just a comment, not a thesis. There are a number of parameters that require thought, most of them point towards reducing the import of oil, so I beg you, think a little on the matter.